There’s an old saw that may or may not be a Joan Rivers joke: “Men–can’t live with them and can’t live without them!” That’s how I feel about deadlines. As someone who has plied the freelancers trade for lo! these many years, you’d think I’d have conquered my deadline issues long ago. Ha!
I invariably start off a writing project with the best of intentions. This time I will proceed in a manner befitting the adult, grown-up, fully-mature writer that I am. Ha!
More likely what will happen is this: I’ll spend no little time inputting my deadline and other relevant information on one of the several calendars I keep. I will then make a detailed plan of my research needs. And a reasonable schedule for pre-drafting, first drafting, second drafting, revision, third drafting, re-revision and then, if all goes well, final copy. Again, ha!
More likely what will happen is this: I’ll exhaust my ambition with the inputting and planning. I’ll do the research in fits and starts, blips and blobs. I’ll start writing in a frenzy when I realize that the deadline is around the proverbial corner. I will do several drafts but not in such a calm, ordered manner. I’ll write, revise, read out loud, scratch out, reorganize, rewrite, do some more research and rewrite some more. Until–I have no more time. Truly. I slide into my deadlines like a runner sliding into home. I know I’m done with a piece–when it’s due, and not a moment sooner.
Over the years, this has created an enormous amount of guilt. After all, if I can’t proceed in a manner befitting an adult, grown-up, fully mature writer, then what does that say about me? But as I actually mature–get older, that is–I’ve started to realize that there’s an unconscious method to my madness. I need my deadlines up close and personal; I need to run the bases and slide into home at the last minute; I need all that tension in order to shut out the multiple editors in my head judging what I write. Without the pressure of a deadline, I can get paralyzed obsessing over word choice or sentence structure or whether I’m actually saying what I mean to be or should be or think I am.
I thought of this last week when my writer’s group discussed a new short story by one of the members. It was a fantastic piece of writing, and this from a writer who is normally an excellent stylist. But this story was something different. There was an immediacy about it that wowed everyone in the group. The writer was surprised because contrary to her usual writing process, she’d thrown this one together at the last minute. Did that freshness, that immediacy come from the fact that she’d had no time to worry her prose to death? My bet is, yes.
Samuel Johnson, the grand old man of English letters, had a deadline problem too, it is said. His publisher used to dispatch a man to Johnson’s rooms to whip the manuscript pages out from under Johnson’s pen the minute they were finished. That was the only way the publisher could be assured of Johnson making his deadline. An interesting literary tidbit, yes. And a reassuring one for those of us who slide into home when we’re finishing a project.
What’s your style when it comes to deadlines? Does it benefit your writing? Or might trying something else be–oh, wait: it’s Wednesday and this thing is due NOW!
Jane Gassner
